Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

6Chapter 1tions at all. This theory starts with the socially integrating force ofrationally motivating, hence noncoercive processes of reachingunderstanding. These provide a space for distance and recognizeddifferences within a sustained commonality of convictions. Moralphilosophers and philosophers oflaw adopt this perspective in thenormative discourses they still carry on, indeed with greater vigorthan ever before. Because they specialize in dealing with questionsof normative validity in the performative attitude of participants,they usually remain inside the limited horizon of lifeworlds whosespell has been broken by the objectivating observations of socialscientists for some time now. Normative theories are open to thesuspicion that they take insufficient notice of the hard facts thathave long contradicted the contractarian self-understanding of themodern constitutional state. From the objectivating viewpoint ofthe social sciences, a philosophical approach that still operates withthe alternatives of forcibly stabilized versus rationally legitimatedorders belongs to the transitional semantics of early modernity.Such terminology seemingly became obsolete once the transitionfrom stratified to functionally differentiated societies was complete.Even when we adopt a theoretical approach that accords acentral role to a communicative concept of "practical reason," wemust, so it seems, single out a special and particularly demandingform of communication that covers only a small part of the broadspectrum of observable forms of communication: "using suchnarrow channels one can hardly succeed, in the new paradigm ofreaching understanding, in once again filling out a sufficientlycomplex theory of society."3Tossed to and fro between facticity and validity, political theoryand legal theory today are disintegrating into camps that hardlyhave anything more to say to one another. The tension betweennormative approaches, which are constantly in danger of losingcontact with social reality, and objectivistic approaches, whichscreen out all normative aspects, can be taken as a caveat againstfixating on one disciplinary point of view. Rather, one must remainopen to different methodological standpoints (participant vs.observer), different theoretical objectives (interpretive explicationand conceptual analysis vs. description and empirical explanation),the perspectives of different roles Uudge, politician, legislator,